Bill Jones recently had the opportunity to meet up with Miserable Malcolm in his Stroud bedsit and have a chat about bringing his show Graveside Manner to this year’s Plymouth Fringe Festival…
Bill: Can you tell me a little about your show?
Miserable Malcolm: (Pause) It’s a one-man show where I read my poems about death and despair. There’s also quite a lot of material about how my girlfriend left me for someone else.
Bill: Right.
Miserable Malcolm: For someone called Dave.
Bill: OK.
(Pause)
Bill: Maybe you could tell me something about your poetry?
Miserable Malcolm: In my poetry I want to express … a deep-seated sense of loneliness, existential horror, pain, suffering, anguish, affliction…
Bill: Yes …
Miserable Malcolm: … despair, hopelessness, isolation and the longing for death. Things like that.
Bill: Super! And have you taken your show to any other Fringes?
Miserable Malcolm: I’ve performed it at Brighton, Barnstaple and Stroud Fringes, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Bristol and elsewhere.
Bill: And did people enjoy it?
Miserable Malcolm: (Pause) They seemed to.
Bill: How do you prepare for your show?
Miserable Malcolm: I spend a long time staring at the wall and wondering if life is as awful as it appears to be.
Bill: And is it?
Miserable Malcolm: (Pause) Yes.
Bill: As well as poems about death and despair and your ex-girlfriend, what else can audiences expect from the show?
Miserable Malcolm: (Pause) There are a lot of pauses in it.
Bill: And finally, when and where is the show?
Miserable Malcolm: 2nd and 3rd of June, 3pm at the Nowhere Inn.
Bill: The Nowhere Inn?
Miserable Malcolm: It feels like I’ve been travelling there all my life.
